A post about (nice) assets.

The million dollar question is: What are you doing with your time? Categorizing the things you’re doing as asset-like and one-off is a helpful shortcut of looking at the effectiveness of actions in a system.

Assets are, of course, the holy grail of business jargon.

Robert Kiyosaki, Alex Hormozi and everyone in between talk about the differences between things that are assets and things that are not. Assets generate compounding value over time, non-assets create value once and then disappear. This allows the magic of volume to prevail in the effectiveness of a system.

What interests me so much about this interaction between assets and non assets is that it transcends business. It’s the same in the gym as it is in business. Consistency is the most important piece, not the perfection or quality of the action.

This idea appears in everything from “Systems Vs Goals” mindset to compounding interest in stocks. This idea appears everywhere. Ericsson’s deliberate practice, Duckworth’s grit. These are all functions of volume. Of consistency. In fact that’s a large part of Duckworth’s argument within “Grit”, “hard work counts double.”.

In the case of “Grit” we’re looking at how volume effects skill and success. In this case the asset is the skill associated with high volume of practice. The skill gets better over time.

So is the magical question not actually the grittiness, but just volume? The volume of practice? Grit enables the volume that ultimately can result in exceptional skill.

So what else enables volume? The role of play gets frequently overlooked. Play enables incredible amounts of volume. Play enables volume by lack of attachment to the outcome. Duckworth hits on this when talking about how children learn– they had yet to understand that making mistakes is ‘bad’.

Attachment to outcome, or to the social ramifications of an action taken poorly in public is a key indicator of whether or not a person can pursue volume, and thus excellence.

Do one thing, do it a lot. Care about quality after consistency is developed. Quality comes with repetition, there’s magic in volume.

Code is an asset. An apartment is an asset. A blog post is an asset. A business is an asset. Skills are assets. Develop assets over time. I’m trying to do the same.